Readings and Launches

There have been readings and launches of two books on Hyderabad in the past weeks but I have somehow managed to miss going to both of them. It was in the papers, yesterday as well as today, about the launch of Vanaja Banagiri’s ‘Hyderabad Haazir Hai’ at Kakatiya. I haven’t learnt about it before or I would have gone to the launch.

Anyway, there’s a mother-of-all- book- readings coming up next week- that of Amitav Ghosh’s ‘Sea of Poppies’ on the 24th of this month. I am quite excited about it except that I am wondering from where to pool up the five hundred odd bucks to pay for a copy. It is that time of the month when the wallet appears quite light.

It was exactly this month two or four years ago that Amitav Ghosh was in Hyderabad for the launch of his ‘The Hungry Tide.’ I had gone to that reading as well, and as is usual in Hyderabad, some guy asked an inane question that had everyone cringing, but Ghosh somehow answered it with a lot of panache and also, I must add, with patience. If I were in Ghosh’s place I would have walked over to the questioner and swotted him one on the head with the wireless microphone. It was that silly, his question.

Gurcharan Das, author of ‘India Unbound’ and other books is giving a talk today evening somewhere in Jubilee Hills but it doesn’t seem to be about books or anything like that so I am not going. There seems to be a lot happening in Hyderabad connected with books except that very few in Hyderabad seem to be writing them, not counting me :-)